Tea Party shuns Obama birthplace lawyer

April 14th, 2010, 3:24 pm
by Dena Bunis, Washington Bureau Chief

Lawyer Orly Taitz has been told she won’t be allowed to speak at a Tea Party tax day rally in Pleasanton on Thursday because other candidates planning to be on the platform basically don’t want to be seen with her.

“We hadn’t done our research,’’ said Bridget Melson, who is organizing the rally in Pleasanton, which has one of the larger Tea Party groups in the states. “When some of the more defamatory comments she was making came out we realized that wasn’t what the Tea Party was about.’’

Taitz, a Laguna Niguel lawyer, has received national attention for her crusade to prove that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. She has had her lawsuits tossed out of court and was fined …$20,000 for filing frivolous ones.
In a phone interview with her Thursday morning, Taitz, who is a candidate in the GOP primary for secretary of state, said she will be at the Pleasanton event and two other Tea Party rallies upstate.

“If they won’t let me speak from the stage, I will just be talking to people in the crowd,’’ she said. Taitz added that when she was asked to speak at this event “they were very aware of the fact that I had filed a number of legal actions questioning Obama’s legitimacy.’’

Taitz believes that she was disinvited because she has raised issues about fellow GOP candidate Damon Dunn’s eligibility to be on the ballot. Dunn is a former NFL player living in Irvine.

“This event is not a debate of a disclosure forum,’’ said Fred Watson, the Pleasanton Tea Party activist who first invited Taitz to speak. “I explained to her that if she wanted to talk about Damon Dunn and her discovery that this was not what this forum is about and it would not be allowed.’’

GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina is scheduled to be at the event as well as a representative of Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. The third Republicans in the Senate race, Tom Campbell, was invited as well but his schedule wouldn’t allow him to come, Melson said.

Fiorina spokeswoman Amy Thoma said they just learned Tuesday that Taitz had been invited.

“Obviously Carly disagrees with President Obama on a number of issues but she believes he is a legitimately elected president and a natural born citizen,’’ Thoma said. Had Taitz not been disinvited for Thursday’s event, “it would have changed the conversation,’’ Thoma said, in terms of whether Fiorina would still have attended.

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